Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Jaspers: existence and transcendence; set of ciphers

Kurzinhalt: fundamental concepts: Existenz and Transzendenz, existence and transcendence; for him, there is no way of breaking the Kantian immanence; to think we are knowing anything would be metaphysics

Textausschnitt: ... Jaspers's concern is also with the subject. He has a first-hand acquaintance with science because of his professional studies. His idea of science is empiricist and pragmatist. He can give you magnificent descriptions and analyses of the experiencing, intelligent, rational subject. His philosophy is mostly worked out by explanations of the meanings of German words, but it is brilliant in its nuances. (190; Fs)
()
81/7 Jaspers's two fundamental concepts are Existenz and Transzendenz, existence and transcendence. As he states in his Philosophie, these words mean what is expressed by mythical consciousness with the names 'soul' and 'God.' Why is it that Jaspers uses these two terms and says that their meaning is equivalent to what the mythmaker named soul and God? It is because he sees no answer to Kant. He is in line with Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, the moral side of Kant, as well as with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and he made them much more profound and far-reaching. He has no idea of rational consciousness reaching the unconditioned and using truth as a medium through which reality is known. Because he does not have that idea, the only knowledge he can have is of two kinds: the knowledge you can have from pragmatic science - it works - and the experience one can have of oneself as experiencing, intelligent, reasonable, free, and responsible. In one's experiencing oneself, above all as free and responsible, one has an experience of soul. But one must not speak of soul as though one were knowing a reality through that experience. For him, there is no way of breaking the Kantian immanence. If you could break the Kantian immanence, then you could use the word 'soul' and be talking about a reality; but you cannot break it, and so to talk about soul as though it were a reality is myth. In this experience his philosophy is aimed at an illumination of Existenz. It is a matter of self-appropriation. Self-appropriation is, of course, essential to Jaspers, because he has no way of saying anything that is true, that corresponds to reality. That is blocked off by his Kantian assumptions, his failure to get beyond Kant. His philosophy aims at an illumination of Existenz, and in selfawareness, in the illumination that self can have in experiencing itself, there emerges an awareness of Transzendenz in the exercise of freedom, especially in the exercise of freedom in limiting situations, situations involving guilt, struggle, suffering, and death. (190f; Fs) (notabene)